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I trust your a enjoyable summer: I did not. On the day we were supposed to be travel for leisure, I was sitting in A&E with my husband, waiting for him to have prompt but common surgery, which resulted in our vacation arrangements were forced to be cancelled.

From this episode I realized a truth valuable, all over again, about how hard it is for me to acknowledge pain when things go wrong. I’m not talking about major catastrophes, but the more common, subtly crushing disappointments that – unless we can actually acknowledge them – will significantly depress us.

When we were expected to be on holiday but weren't, I kept feeling a tug towards looking for silver linings: “I can {book a replacement trip|schedule another vacation|arrange a different getaway”; “At least we have {travel insurance|coverage for trips|protection for journeys”; “This’ll give me {something to write about|material for an article|content for a story”. But I remained low, just a bit blue. And then I would face the reality that this holiday had truly vanished: my husband’s surgery necessitated frequent uncomfortable wound care, and there is a finite opportunity for an enjoyable break on the Belgian coast. So, no holiday. Just disappointment and frustration, suffering and attention.

I know worse things can happen, it’s only a holiday, an enviable dilemma to have – I know because I tried that line too. But what I needed was to be truthful to myself. In those times when I was able to stop fighting off the disappointment and we discussed it instead, it felt like we were sharing an experience. Instead of feeling depressed and trying to appear happy, I’ve allowed myself all sorts of unpleasant emotions, including but not limited to anger and frustration and aversion and wrath, which at least felt real. At times, it even turned out to enjoy our time at home together.

This brought to mind of a wish I sometimes notice in my psychotherapy patients, and that I have also experienced in myself as a client in therapy: that therapy could perhaps erase our difficult moments, like clicking “undo”. But that arrow only goes in reverse. Facing the reality that this is unattainable and embracing the pain and fury for things not working out how we expected, rather than a dishonest kind of “reframing”, can facilitate a change of current: from denial and depression, to progress and potential. Over time – and, of course, it requires patience – this can be profoundly impactful.

We consider depression as being sad – but to my mind it’s a kind of dulling of all emotions, a repressing of rage and grief and letdown and happiness and energy, and all the rest. The substitute for depression is not happiness, but acknowledging every sentiment, a kind of genuine feeling freedom and freedom.

I have repeatedly found myself caught in this desire to click “undo”, but my little one is helping me to grow out of it. As a first-time mom, I was at times swamped by the incredible needs of my infant. Not only the nourishing – sometimes for over an hour at a time, and then again under 60 minutes after that – and not only the outfit alterations, and then the repeating the process before you’ve even completed the change you were doing. These day-to-day precious tasks among so many others – efficiency blended with affection – are a solace and a significant blessing. Though they’re also, at moments, persistent and tiring. What astounded me the most – aside from the lack of rest – were the feelings requirements.

I had assumed my most important job as a mother was to meet my baby’s needs. But I soon realized that it was unfeasible to meet all of my baby’s needs at the time she needed it. Her appetite could seem endless; my nourishment could not arrive quickly, or it came too fast. And then we needed to alter her clothes – but she hated being changed, and cried as if she were falling into a shadowy pit of misery. And while sometimes she seemed soothed by the cuddles we gave her, at other times it felt as if she were lost to us, that no solution we provided could aid.

I soon realized that my most important job as a mother was first to survive, and then to support her in managing the powerful sentiments caused by the infeasibility of my shielding her from all unease. As she enhanced her skill to take in and digest milk, she also had to cultivate a skill to process her feelings and her distress when the supply was insufficient, or when she was hurting, or any other hard and bewildering experience – and I had to evolve with her (and my) frustration, rage, despair, hatred, disappointment, hunger. My job was not to guarantee smooth experiences, but to help bring meaning to her feelings journey of things not going so well.

This was the difference, for her, between being with someone who was seeking to offer her only pleasant sentiments, and instead being assisted in developing a capacity to experience all feelings. It was the difference, for me, between aiming to have great about doing a perfect job as a ideal parent, and instead cultivating the skill to accept my own imperfections in order to do a adequately performed – and understand my daughter’s letdown and frustration with me. The difference between my seeking to prevent her crying, and comprehending when she had to sob.

Now that we have grown through this together, I feel reduced the urge to hit “undo” and alter our history into one where everything goes well. I find optimism in my awareness of a skill evolving internally to understand that this is impossible, and to realize that, when I’m busy trying to rebook a holiday, what I truly require is to cry.